Strategic Contracts: Clearly Defined and Measurable Desired Outcomes The next in Kate Vitasek’s series on the Five Rules/Ten Elements published by ISM. Vested’s Rule No. 3 for creating a Vested agreement directs the parties to clearly define and measure their desired outcomes. There are two contractual aspects when it comes to how an organization should […]

Frequently I engage in good fodder with colleagues and luminaries on topics that seem obscure—but then somehow prove to have powerful lessons for today’s businesses. This post comes courtesy of Steve Frampton – who left a successful career as a procurement professional and outsourcing change management expert at Kimberly Clark to become a business coach. […]

Last week I talked about the Apollo Program and Robert Braun’s idea that you can “celebrate failure” – which boils down not being afraid fail in order to achieve your Desired Outcome. Braun, NASA’s Chief Technologist, probably knows a little something about risks, innovation and how to handle them. In an interview in NASA’s ask […]

A risk-averse mindset would never have landed us on the Moon during the heady days that followed John F. Kennedy’s directive in 1962 for the U.S. to “go to the Moon” by the end of that decade. I love to use story of how powerful Kennedy’s words were when I teach students and executives about […]

If you’ve been involved with outsourcing long enough, and if you’ve paid attention to the basic message of Vested Outsourcing, then then you probably know that service level agreements—SLAs—are somewhat lacking when it comes to forging collaborative and transformative relationships. That’s mainly because task-oriented SLAs generally are too one-sided in favor of the company outsourcing. […]

I’ve talked recently about the need for outsource contracting in a transparent and flexible Vested environment, but what about the actual cost of establishing a business contract? While there is obviously no standard cost template for contract negotiation services—contracts can vary from the exceedingly short and simple to the immensely long and complex and you […]

I’m sure you have heard of the handshake deal. Some are amazingly successful and long-lasting, but it’s rare that the initial handshake is not followed up with a contract that formalizes the initial meeting of the minds. In a way the handshake is (or should be) a very Vested act, because it implies – if […]

Adrian Gonzalez brings up an interesting point about the multifaceted use and misuse of the word collaboration in a recent Logistics Viewpoints blog entry. He says, and I totally agree, that collaboration is arguably one of the most overused words in supply chain management. (Other overused but often unrealized terms include flexibility, agility, visibility, innovation, […]

Todd Shire, Logistics Sourcing Strategy Manager at Intel, has been a big fan of Vested Outsourcing from day one. He’s been generous with his thoughts and help and his valuable insights were major contributions to the first Vested book, Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules That Will Transform Outsourcing, which was published just over a year ago. […]

Is equity sharing a good strategy to build a long-term, collaboration between companies and vendors? And how well does it fit into the Vested Outsourcing model? A recent Bloomberg Businessweek article about the electronics company Vizio prompts those questions, and the simple answers are that it depends, but probably not. What seems like a straightforward […]